Sunday, July 03, 2016

Is Better PR Really the Answer?

Joshua Nass seems like a nice guy with great Jewish values. Josh is a young Orthodox Jewish
professional who runs a successful public relations firm. He wrote an op-ed in
the last issue of Mishpacha Magazine that proposes helping his community - our
community - by advocating a public relations push to highlight what’s right
about us to counter all the negative news that we read about ourselves in the
media. The point being that there is far more that we do right as a community
than we do wrong.

I happen to agree with his view of our commuity. There is a lot we do that
speaks well of us. Things like Hatzalah, an EMT organization founded and run by Orthodox Jews that has saved countless lives since its founding. Not only
Orthodox Jewish lives – not only Jewish lies, but all lives. As an example of
that, not long ago here in my Chicago neighborhood of West Rogers Park - an
Orthodox Jew saw a non Jewish women in distress and called Hatzalah. They arrived
moments after the call to aid her. Which she ended up being very grateful for.
This is the kind of Kiddush HaShem we should be talking about. It is something
we should tout to the media. But it is something that the media is rarely reports.
And there are tons of things like this that go on every day by a variety of Orthodox
Jewish service organizations or individual that go unreported. And unheralded.

What he have instead is what seems like a daily litany of misdeeds
by Orthodox organizations or Jews. Josh wants to turn that around. Because the
picture the world gets is not that of being a light unto the nations that organizations
like Hatzalah are. The picture is often that of bearded Orthodox Jewish rabbis doing a perp
walk having been arrested for a variety of sins, financial or otherwise.

I agree that we ought to do more to present our good
side. I hope Orthodox Jewish organization take up Josh's generous offer of his PR talents to help publicize all the good that they do.

That said, in the course of his essay, Josh reveals a degree
of naiveté about the nature of journalism. Which I think would be counter intuitive
to someone in the PR business. I say this because of the questions he asks journalists
he ‘rubs elbows with’: ‘Why do you show only the bad?’ ‘We do so much good.’
Why not show that as well?’ Their answer, he says, is that those stories ‘aren’t
pitched to us’.

I’m sure that’s true. But he has to realize that the job of
journalism is more about exposing wrongdoing than it is about reporting the
good stuff. Because wrongdoing needs to be addressed and changed . If
wrongdoing goes unreported, it increases the probability that it will continue.
And that hurts people. If on the other
hand a good deed goes unreported, it still benefited the person or community it
was done for. No one is hurt if it goes unreported. It is therefore far more
important to report wrongdoing... to expose it so that authorities or the public
can put a stop to it.

There is also a famous quote that is applicable here. Dog
bites man, is not news. Man bites dog is
news. Meaning that normal behavior is not reported. Only abnormal behavior is. So that
when a story features a religious Jew that committed a fraud (for example) - that
is a man bites dog story. The Jews that don’t do that represent the norm.

That should
be seen as a tribute to us. The problem is that it doesn’t work that way. If
all one sees a constant flow of stories about fraud by Orthodox Jews, people might
then generalize and think that Orthodox Judaism sees nothing wrong with fraud! (Which
is the main reason I protest it publicly when I see it.)

It should be noted that there are occasional positive stories
about Orthodox Jews. For example one may recall the story where an Orthodox rabbi found a substantial amount of money hidden in a desk he bought from a non Jew and immediately
called up the seller to return it. Or the story a few years ago about an
Orthodox businessman that continued to pay the salaries of all his employees for
a full year even after his business was destroyed in a fire.

Another thing that should be noted is that the Orthodox
Jewsih community is not the only one that is treated this way in the media. The
Catholic Church has certainly had its share of negative reporting (deservedly
so) about the massive amount of sexual abuse that so many of its priests are guilty
of. But there is practically no reporting at all of the Church’s missionary work
with the poorest of the poor in 3rd world countries.

While it is true that they are
promoting their religion to these people, these missionaries dedicate their
lives to feed starving people in countries far away from civilization. People that most
of us ignore – even though we all know about it. And yet when most people
think of the Catholic Church these days, they think of pedophile priests. Not their missionary work. That’s because the media focuses on the pedophile priest and gives little to no coverage of their
missionary work.

The real solution to our image issue is not a PR blitz. Although I think better
PR would be helpful - the real solution is look in the mirror and see why so
many of us end up getting caught doing something wrong.

It is true that
Orthodoxy is not immune to human nature and wrongdoing – just like any other group. We will always
have our share of wrongdoers. But I definitely think we can do better to reduce the
amount of wrongdoing that takes place among us. Whether it is doing a better job
dealing with sex abuse or teaching our people to be honest in all of our dealings. Instead of forever seeking ‘creative ways’ in which to increase the income of our
unemployed or underemployed.

There is a lot we can do and we are not doing it.
It least not as much we could nor as fast as we should. If we do not give the
media anything to report on, that would go a long way to leaving only the good
for the media to focus upon.

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About Me

My outlook on Judaism is based mostly on the teachings of my primary Rebbe, Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik from whom I received my rabbinic ordination. It is also based on a search for spiritual truth. Among the various sources that put me on the right path, two great philosophic works stand out: “Halakhic Man” and “Lonely Man of Faith” authored by the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher and theologian, Rabbi, Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Of great significance is Rabbi, Dr. Norman Lamm's conceptualization and models of Torah U’Mada and Dr. Eliezer Berkovits who introduced me to the world of philosophic thought. Among my early influences were two pioneers of American Elementary Torah Chinuch, Rabbis Shmuel Kaufman and Yaakov Levi. The Yeshivos I attended were Yeshivas Telshe for early high school and more significantly, the Hebrew Theological College where for a period of ten years, my Rebbeim included such great Rabbinic figures as Rabbis Mordechai Rogov, Shmaryahu Meltzer, Yaakov Perlow, Herzl Kaplan, and Selig Starr. I also attended Roosevelt University where I received my Bachelor's Degree - majoring in Psychology.